Gmail to be discontinued from February 8

Google is set to abandon Gmail on some Chrome browsers by the end of 2017.

In a blog posted by the company, it has said that Gmail will stop working on Chrome's 53 or lower versions. Google has also said that this process will start from February 8 itself. Users still using Windows XP and Windows Vista users will be the ones directly affected by the move.

Google has said that the versions had to be stopped because they are open to security risks. The security risks developed mainly after Microsoft decided to withdraw support for Windows XP and Vista. Google will also not provide any bug fixes or security patches for these versions of Chrome.

The company also said that users still using these versions will be flashed a message or banner on their screens, a move that the company doesn't generally take.

"Google does not typically announce when we discontinue support for older versions of Chrome browser because of our current supported browser policy, which states that only the most recent versions of Chrome are supported. This announcement was made given the expected impact on Windows XP and Windows Vista users and known security risks," the company said in the blog-post.

In case users still choose to continue with the same version and not upgrade, they will be able to continue using Gmail through 2017, but will be redirected to the basic HTML version of Gmail.